Skip to content

Anglish-Language Thoughts

  • by

But no, not English. Anglish.

This’s something I became conscious of rather recently. If you have read through a number of these posts, you are likely informed that English is a mainly Germanic language, but is affected by languages of various origins, especially French. Whenever we glance at the text English speakers use nowadays, we are able to discover a fascinating blend of Germanic, Norse, along with Romance languages, and also the unexpected bit of languages from farther afield.

As English is needed all around the planet, it also occurs these days, as the unexpected word is going to come from another language recently, or perhaps be made by non native speakers to fill a niche (French term).

And that is good. Many of us are not actually conscious of this, as the words were currently there when we had been created, or even steadily found the way of theirs into day use. We do not need to be conscious of where words are derived from to use them. Precisely the same holds true of various other languages too: it is just essentially how languages work. They do not exist in isolation.

But needless to say you will find those who would like it did not work in that way. This is exactly where Anglish enters it. Anglish is not actually an officially recognised language or dialect. It is generally an attempt at linguistic purism, involving using just terms of Anglo Saxon origin. Start rather than commence, make rather than create, for instance. What about cases in which there aren’t any Anglo Saxon equivalents for Latin based words, very well, they might be made up. Not entirely from the pink, in fairness, but while using conventions of pre modern variations of English. as coining words like wordstock to switch vocabulary.

I’ve to admit, I do not truly understand folks desiring to restrict English to terms of strictly Germanic origin. I might understand whether an immortal person grew disappointed with the changes through the centuries on the language of the youth of theirs. But why would somebody who grew up naturally acquiring contemporary English want to stay away from common words they along with other English speakers use with great ease, because a huge selection of years ago it steadily evolved from a Greek or french word?

There have usually been individuals that desired to make English strictly Germanic, and today this wiki, The Anglish Moot appears to be their internet home (want to find out about Star Wars in Anglish!?).

I do not entirely disagree with proponents of Anglish. I am with George Orwell in the dislike of mine of inkhorns. An inkhorn term is a borrowed phrase from another language (generally French, Greek, or maybe Latin) that’s regarded as pretentious or unnecessary. I never love using such a phrase when there is a typical simple word that can do. As well as though several established English words started as inkhorns, it is normal to fight them when they are being freshly released to English, as we keep connected to the kind of the language we were raised with.

Though I do not comprehend why anybody right now would wish to restrict themselves to utilizing purely Germanic words, and also force themselves to produce new phrases based upon early linguistic conventions. It is a fascinating linguistic experiment, so that as a purely psychological exercise I love the thought of coining new terms utilizing Germanic conventions.

I do not wish to believe what people’s motivations are, though I can picture that individuals could possibly support Anglish since they do not love cultures that are various influencing and interacting one another. But that is merely how countries & languages function, therefore do not count on me to be modifying the site’s name to Anglish Tung Thoughts time soon!